SACRAMENTO – California’s top public officials are “all in” when it comes to the issue of man-made global warming. Gov. Jerry Brown has been in the news for his doom-and-gloom comments at a Vatican climate-change symposium. This week he poked his nose in the Republican presidential race. He blamed wildfires and drought on global warming and then asked the candidates: “What is your plan to deal with the threat of climate change?”

The governor’s increasingly heated rhetoric no doubt is explained by his honest belief that something must be done. But there may also be a practical reason that California officials are so eager to see other states, the federal government and other countries embrace similar climate-change policies.

One state – even as large as California – cannot have any noticeable effect on the Earth’s temperatures. The landmark AB 32 law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 to turn back California’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, was never championed as a way to slow the Earth’s predicted warming. It was designed to be a model for others.